The Department of Health and Human Services is trumpeting new survey resultsshowing a huge increase in the number of young adults with health insurance as sign that [Obamacare] has been a success.

According to a survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly one million adults under the age of 26 gained health insurance in 2011. As a result, the percentage of adults between the ages of 19 and 25 with health insurance rose from 66.1% in 2010 to 69.6 this year.

One of the major provisions of [ObamaCare] allowed young adults to remain on their parents' health insurance program until age 26. That provision went into effect last September.

On the other hand, the percentage adults over the age 26 with health insurance decreased by almost 5 percentage pointsover the same period. This is a fact that our liberal counterparts at Firedoglake have not missed:

...overall that improvement has not been large enough to make up for the steady loss of insurance coverage due to high unemployment and rising insurance premiums. The percentage of Americans without insurance has continued to climb since the passage of [Obamacare] and is now at 17.4 percent among all Americans.

Let's also remember that there's no such thing as a free lunch. One commenter looks at it this way:

Of course more young people are getting health insurance - people like me are paying for it. My insurance went up 17% this year because of the provision in Obama care where young adults, up to the age of 26, can be covered by their parents plan.

The annual Milliman Medical Index (MMI) measures the total cost of healthcare for a typical family of four covered by a preferred provider plan (PPO). The 2011 MMI cost is $19,393, an increase of $1,319, or 7.3% over 2010...

Employees' share of the total cost is at an all-time high, having increased from 36.8% in the first year of the MMI (2005) to 39.7% in 2011.

Unfortunately, young adults who aren't covered by their parents are particularly hard-hit by Obamacare's restriction on age rating of premiums. Mandated “rate compression” forces insurers to overprice coverage for younger individuals.

To summarize, health care costs for families (including young adults) are at an all-time high. And while more young adults now have a health insurance card to carry around, health insurance coverage for adults over the age of 26 has dropped by approximately 5 percentage points.

The annual Milliman Medical Index (MMI) measures the total cost of healthcare for a typical family of four covered by a preferred provider plan (PPO). The 2011 MMI cost is $19,393, an increase of $1,319, or 7.3% over 2010:

To be fair we should compare the year over year percentage change in this analysis. Another factor is the value of the dollar.

Consider the value of the stock market prior and post the big sell off, as Obama was elected, in relation to the weaker dollar. At the same index number, the current stock market is worth trillions less in real terms.

So some of the price increase is ObamaCare inflation and some is Obama economic policy.

The cost increase is even greater than the numbers would show, FYI. For example, our company has Anthem (Blue Cross in California), and they are revising all of their plans in substantial negative ways to compensate for the Obamacare cost increases. For example, in-network and out-of-network costs now accumulate separately toward different deductibles, whereas previously you had a single deductible (effectively, doubling the deductible if you mix in and out of network providers). That's just one example, though; there are changes across the board, and they are all detrimental to coverage.

On the flip side, it's the strongest indication yet that we desperately need good health care reform, and perhaps if we could get some people in government who are not just interested in increasing the size/control of government, we might be able to get actual productive health care reform, and not another step backwards like Obamacare.

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